


A History of Touch

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Catharsis, Contentious fuck buddy dynamics, F/F, M/M, Multi, Smut, Some grief and comfort, Steve's dirty mouth, Steve's gluttony for punishment, emotionally stunted characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:21:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28095333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: Steve Rogers went to sleep for 70 years and woke up in a lost world. All his loved ones are gone, and even when he gets one of them back years later, Bucky’s not quite back how he wants. It’s fine. Steve might have a bad track record, but at least he’s got a damn good façade.Until you ruin it. Because you ruin everything.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Reader, Steve Rogers/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 65





	A History of Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Helios back at it again with hurting Steve Rogers aaaaaaaaaaaah. I'm sorry! Hope you like it-- everything's real angry.

You’re bad with directions, that’s always been the case.

Resistant to guidance and steering—if you were a horse, you’d be the hypothetically dead kind someone keeps beating.

It’s why he’s not the least bit surprised that you’re hobbling across the parking lot of his apartment complex at this ungodly hour. You should be heading back to compound quarters as directed, but Steve was closer, and your gushing wound required immediate attention.

He stands frigidly in damp grass, caught under the building’s long shadow with his fists in his pocket and a wry look, annoyed to be the lucky idiot who lived nearby. A golden boy scowling dark enough to black out every streetlight.

Steve assess the damage as you limp. Shreds of mismatched fabric are holding you up, knotted haphazardly together and then looped around the meat of your thigh. The rest of you looks fine enough, but you wheeze quietly like you’ve got a potentially cracked rib.

He considers letting you throw an arm over his shoulder or picking you up. Anything to help take some pressure off that mauled limb, but one: you’d probably shove him if he tried, and two: he just… _wouldn’t_. 

Instead, he demands, “Where’s Bucky?”

“Are you— serious?” Your volume shoots sky-high like one of those cartoon mercury thermometers, his eardrums being the top blowing clear off. “ _Again,_ with Barnes—I’m leaking blood and you’re asking about _Barnes_?”

“Keep your voice down.”

You play deaf, complaining about his tendency to coddle everyone except you—and thank god for that because you don’t know how they live with him breathing down their backs _._

“It’s creepy,” you say, “Get a hobby, Rogers. A girlfriend. A project. One that’s _not_ Barnes because he’s completely capable on his own—he’s not made of glass. Shit.”

You gather the blackening gossamer hemline of your dress and grip it tightly, struggling to keep up with his brisk stride. “Your pal punched one of Tony’s suits the other day and I’m pretty sure he made it cry. Whatever Nazi Koolaid they mainlined you with—"

“ _Where_ is your off button?”

“Have you looked for it… in your dreams?”

You retain your nerve even though the corner of your mouth is twitching, deflecting the genuine pain flickering across your face— how tired you are. A few more seconds of Steve pondering if he’s a sociopath for ignoring your sorry state before he resigns to simply tuning you out.

It’s automatic. A skill he could categorize as instinct. Some blessed evolutionary trait developed in the brief span of nine months for the sake of his sanity— because he’d die otherwise.

You’re the biggest thorn in his side and frankly, he feels poisoned by your entire _everything_. The worst teammate he’s ever had. That inflamed itch in the back of his throat that never quite clears out. You’re easily a hundred times more aggravating than Tony—and _god_ , he remembers how much he despised Tony in the early days.

Impressed upon them by Fury for reasons _still_ unknown to him, Steve pinned you as arrogant from the start. Selfish and childish, you counter his orders at every chance, seeming to find joy in defying him, constantly shaving his patience to a mere thread. Maybe it could have turned out well enough, like Tony did, but nearly a year now and Steve’s concluded that the hostility must be permanent, and that it’ll never change.

He tried, okay? He really did. Tamed his tongue for a while, lowered the register of his voice when he would rather yell, checked himself from grabbing you by the shoulders and—Steve Rogers doesn’t get into fistfights in alleyways anymore. The most he can do is nail your ass in a sparring match and hopes you don’t nail him back. It’s a toss up most days, and that makes it so much worse. He does what he can. He controls himself.

You’re still yammering on, “Barnes caught a goddamn _bullet_ —he collapsed a whole concrete wall— zero scratches on him–” You say Bucky rolled out in pristine condition, followed directions because he’s a good little soldier and left before you did. Steve’s listless, your voice droning on like a mosquito whizzing by his ear. But he’s alert enough to hear your next stomp.

His ears pick up the impact first—the press of your foot on something different— _soft_. Then, very abruptly, it pops like a single piece of oversized bubble wrap and you freeze mid-sentence about Bucky’s shoulders knocking out steel doorframes.

“ _What_ the hell was that…”

You don’t see it yet. A trail of viscous dark green spraying up your bare calf, reaching your knee, disappearing further.

“I don’t know,” Steve snaps quickly. “Shut up.”

Steve _knows_ what it is _._

It’s peak summer and the bugs are _out_ , but it’s also 1:30 and telling you a basic fact about seasons would only be asking for a scene outside of building D when the rest of the complex is still under the illusion that the 6’2” blonde-haired, blue-eyed, built-like-two-tanks resident in 304 is just another civilian.

Nope. He’s not screwing this perfectly domestic arrangement up, especially not for you and your failed elementary education. The faster he hauls you in, the faster he can staple gun your leg shut and watch the door hit your ass on the way out.

“It’s _wet_!?” You shriek, “It’s _dripping_ —”

“It’s _fine_. Now walk like you got somewhere to be,” he commands, “And will you _shut up_.”

Grabbing your shoulders before you can barrel into him, he shoves you up the stairs. Your brain is still catching up to it all, head spinning from your side to your front lest you’re interested in familiarizing your teeth with the next metal step.

Steve yanks the door open, attempting again, “It’s probably just some kid’s food litter. Sauce packet.” One final glance outside and then he flips the deadbolt locked, hand reaching for the hallway scone light.

When warm yellow floods the room, you finally grow brave enough to look down. It’s a few seconds of your own assessment, weighing out the truth of his lie before reaching the conclusion that he’s a filthy, fucking, fibber. Your fists start shaking. “Is this… bug guts?”

Before Steve can tell you for the umpteenth time to shut up again, you surprise him by wailing, “Oh my god! Get it off me? Jesus! Christ! _Steve_!” And Steve physically reels back, astonished that you just called him by his first name and are on the verge of breaking into tears.

He doesn’t know why he makes another feeble effort at, “It’s not—”

“Fuck you, it _is_! _Oh_ —”

It sounds funny and overwhelmed. Desperate. _Unexpected_. Your chest heaving, lips parted, tongue wet inside as you hyperventilate, fingers digging into the floor so hard they go bloodless. The tiniest furrow of his brow, eyes narrowing at the way you continue to gesture frantically, as if expecting him to remedy the situation with another hysterical, “ _Steve_!”

 _“Stop freaking out._ ” He says without thinking. “ _I’ll be right back._ ” Yet, it holds less bite than usual.

His mind’s still turning over the shape of your panting mouth, his name thrown from it carelessly as he briskly steps away and into the kitchen for rags and soap. Then he ducks into the bathroom for the first aid kit, counting his steps, curling his fingers around the case briefly.

As expected, because you can’t be trusted to follow directions any better than a baby can, you’re _absolutely_ freaking out upon his return, in no shape to confront your phobia much less bandage yourself. Choked words come out in a rush of panic, slurred together and fatalistic.

“Don’t even bother, Rogers,” you say, eyes blocked with your forearm. “Just cut it off and kill me like you’ve always wanted to. Kill me dead.”

Steve drops the supplies with a quiet “huh”. Two hours ago, you were probably shattering someone’s jaw and now here you are: falling apart because a _caterpillar_ bled on you. He makes a noise like a snicker. “Sure,” he says, giving it some thought. You? Conceding to him? Steve’ll never get this lucky again.

He lowers to his knees anyway, smirking, with damp rags in hand and marveling at the sudden turn of events. A few precursory strokes with your entire body tense like a bowstring and the green leaves thin filmy residue, shiny on your skin.

The foam glob gets smeared on your leg next, his palm rubbing up and down until it’s slathered all over. He makes sure to get the dry bit on the curve of your kneecap and the side of your thigh. You groan pathetically, shuddering as goosebumps prickle both your arms.

“It’s just _soap_.” Steve mutters, “I’m gonna wipe it off now. _How_ are you such a baby?” He chews on his words, feeling just a little guilty for giving you grief. It’s late, after all. You’ve been working, no matter how poorly— got shot and everything. Likely delirious, now.

Steve’s fingers are skimming the edge of your hipbone before he realizes it, dress lifted, cascading over his wrist and forearm. He’s only aware he’s gone too far when you stare at him pointedly. An irritatingly perfect eyebrow is raised high on your face and if a pin dropped, he’d be able to hear it.

Bristling, but his hands continue their work, too late now to pretend there’s any decency left even if he won’t admit it. Green and red soiled towels, a wince as he moves to the actual wound on the other side, dabbing alcohol, keeping you still when you jerk.

Tweezers excavate a sliver of shrapnel and Steve frowns at how it clings to your muscles. You knock your head against the wall, hissing, hand shooting out to stop him before you pull back and turn away.

“ _Steve_ ,” you say, soft and vulnerable, “That _really_ hurts.”

“One more,” he says back, softer, and the next stab into your leg lances past the first. Strange, how his passing guilt starts settling inside him. Thorn in his side or not, he’s the one literally digging into you now. He almost apologizes when you look at him agonized, sweat collected across your brow, along the lines of your collarbones. Eyes half-lidded.

He swallows thickly, playing disinterest at how you feel like this. Supple in his grip, shivery hot. The skin on the back of your knee delicate in his calloused hold.

Fumbling hands move fabric between your legs to offer flimsy cover, trying not to touch anything he’s not supposed to—or think about touching anything he’s not supposed to. It’s useless, really; it wasn’t a very dignified dress to begin with, and it certainly hasn’t gotten better being pulled on and tugged at—ripped and tangled here and there. His own hands have already rucked it up tonight.

Not a lot. Just a little. But he… could do more of it. 

Steve pretends to concentrate on stitching, squirting iodine and sealing gauze. He keeps himself from the rest of his thoughts—almost.

It’s _quiet_.

Suddenly, your mocking voice breaks the silence. Back to your usual self, it seems.

“Getting awfully familiar there, you little pervert.”

And his own rapid-fire response, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Sly bending lips send his guts upside down. A tilt of your mouth, jerking up in that stereotypical pursed and haughty manner, and he’d very much like to smack it from your face. Kiss it clean off. _Fuck_.

A low drag of his name rumbles from your belly and it makes his skin crawl all the way up to his eyes, to the tips of his ears. Steve bites down before his teeth finds something else to pull on, wholly regretting showing you any semblance of compassion.

He grits out, “I think I liked you better in shock.”

The tip of your tongue provokes him, tracing the sharp point of your canine toward the edge of your front teeth. You croon, “I think you _just_ like me. Noticed you staring _real_ hard.”

Heat blooms from the back of Steve’s neck up his throat and it only takes a second to catch the rest of him. The bottle of iodine splatters on hardwood, rich umber spilling in rivulets when he clambers over your body and takes you to the floor.

He’s hungry— resentful and determined to control a situation he’s truthfully never had any control over, goddammit. You. Your presence. Your relentless need to fuck up his day, and now night. Thanking him with insolence. Taunting him about _liking_ you, when he knows inside the marrow of his ancient fucking bones, he sure as shit does _not_.

All of it, contradictions. His head is swimming when he braces himself above you, glowering, blistering skin high on adrenaline. He doesn’t even care that the weight of him is likely going to bruise you up even worse, or that you’re going to get blood all over his jeans.

“Oh, you _like_ -like me.” Still provoking him, even like this.

Hands find rough purpose, the junction of his thumb and pointer lands on your awful mouth, fingers curving around your face, turning your head to the side until your cheekbone meets the floor. You make another ragged sound when Steve pushes the torn hem up past your waist, pulling your underwear to your knees.

He bears down more, situating his thigh between your legs, until he’s against heat. You buck up, shuddering. He’s trying not to linger on how this is decidedly a terrible idea, fucking someone like you, wanting to drive his hands under their skin, tear them half apart—but he’s angry, and it feels _good._

The phone in his back pocket buzzes twice.

“Be _quiet_ ,” he hisses, scrabbling for it, checking the caller. You huff when he stills, then whimper when he presses his knee to your clit. A slide of his finger up on the screen and he says, “Buck? You alright?”

On the other line, Bucky mumbles a concerned, “She get there?”

“Yes. What about you?”

“I’m fine. Be easy, yeah? It was bound to go pear-shaped anyway. Ricochet doesn’t pick who to hit, it just hits.”

A glance your way, splayed out, and Steve responds tightly, “Can’t make any promises.”

“Jesus, the two of you are like cats and dogs. Jab her with the lidocaine and send her back, we got paperwork in the morning and she can’t sleep in.”

Shit. He’d forgotten all about the local anesthetic before the ripped new holes in you just to put you back together. “Buck–“

“Aw, jeez, Stevie. I can practically hear you sprouting feathers like a mother hen. Listen,” his voice goes small, almost happy. “I’m good, alright? Really good. Glad I went, so do me a solid, and relax.”

Buck hangs up soon after, and Steve slides the phone toward the wall, looking down at your tense body beneath him, but not quite seeing it. Bucky’s fine, like you said, like Steve figures he would be, even though he’ll never get rid of the part of him that rails against any and every one determined to send Bucky off to fight again.

Steve starts blinking back into his body, noticing you wrenching your jaw out of his hand, and hesitates. He shouldn’t be doing this.

“I _told_ you he’s fine,” you sneer up at him. “Keep him cooped up in your little padded rooms and he’ll really go crazy— it’s no favor to him. He doesn’t need you as much as you _think_ , Rogers.”

The fire in Steve’s spine reignites, lodging itself the base of his throat, sparking napalm hot. His face shifts into pure loathing and it keeps him stuck, hovering above you, wheeling blindly back into fury. Steve could actually kill you. He really, truly, could.

You’re the last person on Earth who’d know a damn thing about what’s good for Bucky, or anything about him at all. You didn’t grow up with him. You didn’t fight for him time and time again. Didn’t lose him _twice_ or proverbially drop kick the whole U.S. government for him. 

No.

Steve finally gets Bucky back after the brainwashing and re-washing—what’s left of Bucky’s head a mess of soup and Steve’s only instinct is to keep it all from spilling out, but you make it damn near impossible.

Since Buck’s started at the compound, you’ve been dead set on his entry into the field, his name in your mouth like he’s your best friend, asking to pair up with him. You argue that he’s ‘roided out on serum, takes bullets like flyswatter hits, so let him watch your six and your twelve since the other super soldier could care less if you end up Swiss cheese in an alleyway.

But Bucky isn’t ready— _wasn’t_ ready. He’d gone tonight, though. And Steve’d spent the day feeling cracked out on worry. Now here you are, here Bucky isn’t, and he still can’t admit that you might have been right.

He’s torn about it. Bucky’s made for war, same as Steve. Worse than Steve, seen it even closer, counted its teeth around his neck—but he— Steve grimaces– doesn’t he deserve some rest, goddammit? Who cares how he’s able to function— he’s not a— _weapon_. He needs peace and people who aren’t wanting to make use of him.

Steve searches for verbal footing, emotions pinballing from anger to uncertainty to flustered when you start laughing.

“Aw, Rogers, you wanna fuck me so bad it makes you stupid.”

His world goes full tilt in the wrong direction. He just— _moves,_ mindless about if it’s the right thing to do.

The sound you make as he shoves a finger inside is high and fluttery. Your eyes screw shut, bottom lip pulled tight between your teeth and Steve takes that as a sign to add another one, heel of his palm flush against your clit.

“Beg me to,” he says, voice low and firm. “You always got so much to fucking say. I’m waiting.” But you only gasp, jerking to the pattern of his fingers curling up, back, forth. “Really?” Steve wonders, “This all it takes? Imagine that.”

Your eyes are squeezed shut, brows knitted, chest heaving to catch your breath. Your mouth hangs open mutely, thank fucking _god_. It’s as close as Steve will ever get to begging, and he’ll take it.

Steve puts his hand over it anyway, in case you change your mind.

You swallow syllables of what is very likely a dry _fuck you_ , and Steve can’t deny that he’s aroused as _fuck_ about it, wet in his boxers already. It smells like blood, rubbing alcohol, and that musky sweet tang—you, trembling beneath him, breath puffing and going nowhere in his palm, and the utter helplessness makes him swell against his zipper. A golden boy not as pristine as anyone thinks. God’s righteous man on a mission to break you down.

He rolls his hips again and you squeal like a wounded animal, hooking your ankles behind his back, gripping his waist with your knees, wanting it just as much as he does.

You meet him thrust for thrust when he gets inside, clawing at his shoulders. Steve’s got one leg out of his pants, a bare knee sliding on hardwood, moving it from near your thigh to your hip, angling himself deeper inside of you, feeling the coil in his belly wind itself up.

“That’s it,” he grunts, bottom lip between his teeth, panting hoarsely as he pushes on, face, body, guts, all buzzing. His hips snap against yours like fast punches. It’s mean. Rapidly approaching violent. He doesn’t get to do this often—or, ever. He’s _Steve_ , after all.

Short of signing a NDA in blood and getting tailed by one of the many eerily silent men employed by Fury, no woman comes over to his apartment and gets pounded into the next century. It’s always _nice_ sex. Careful sex. Safe, sweet, wholesome apple pie Captain America sex.

Not rough. Not raw. Not like this. As far as anyone knows, he’s a perfectly saccharine tub of homestyle vanilla—what a shame.

So he lets himself be greedy. Soaks it up because it’s _really_ good. His entire enormous body eclipsing and dominating all of yours. His temper, his rage, his darkness, he’s giving it to you. And you keep taking it so. damn. good.

“Fuck,” he says again, fixing his stare on your hairline, enough away from your face so he doesn’t have to look but can see peripherally how you are. Blissfully numbed, pupils blown out with pleasure, sometimes flinching, and then glazed over immediately, like riding a high. Admittedly pretty in a rare and exposed state.

His cock is sloppy in his hand when he scrambles for it. You were pulsing all around him, coming, clenching so goddamn tight, a better grip than he’s ever had and that was all it took. He presses his pulsing head on the diagonal line of your hip, landing streaks across your belly and onto the floor.

Afterwards, he goes slack, blinking sweat out of his lashes, returning to his thrumming body. You’re panting too, in the comedown, feet gingerly slipping off.

“Shit,” He mutters at the state of the room, reaching for the bottle still idly seeping on its side. “Get up.” He shimmies back into this jeans, ignoring the wet dark spot smudged along the stitching. He’ll have to soak it out. Everything. Maybe bomb the entire place.

“Yep,” you reply curtly in the wake of his handprint, lips puffed up rosy from the pressure, slowly rising on your elbows, fixing your clothes and the tape seeping red.

Steve quietly drags the pile of scattered towels across the mess with one foot, soaking up rust and grime, kicking the first aid tin out of the way with the other. “You… want the shot?” He asks mechanically, eyeing the sterilized needle in its glossy packet.

“No.”

“You can barely walk on that thing.”

“Like you give a shit?”

Neither of you find each other’s eyes here, not even to glare, to chance it. Whatever just happened, it’s getting buried so far beneath his grave it’ll drop right into the mantle. Steve smooths his hair uncomfortably, then steels his appearance back to indifference. “You gonna leave or what?”

A snort. “Already gone.”

You almost look pathetic heading to the exit, laboriously upright only because you’re stubborn like that. He could offer you a jacket or something—anything to cover up the wrap that looks more like leftovers of an old sock than any measure of first aid, at least give you some comfort from the night’s loneliness.

But, he doesn’t. He’ll allow nothing to change because of this. If he does it’ll be admitting to himself that there might be no control here. If you leave with something of his other than spit, it’ll come back around to bite him later like most things involving you.

Nah. Steve’s not that stupid for anything, and never for you.

So he watches as you expressionlessly walk to the door without looking back or saying bye.

He doesn’t say bye either. 


End file.
